aka "Colin wayyy overshares about depression, part 5."
Here are links to previous posts:
Some Poems Is Depression a Good Thing? God of the Depressed The Song of the Suffering Servant
And here are some disclaimers:
Content warning for mental health. In particular, Four Things contains references to anxiety, and most of the pieces contain references to depression and/or suicide. Four Weeks Later contains brief strong language. If you're worried about specific triggers, feel free to ask me!
If you're currently suicidal, I would ask that you not read these poems. Reading about other people's suicidal thoughts generally makes me feel more like self-harm. If reading suicide-related poems will make you very sad, please don't! I will not know that you chose not to read them. Please do not feel obligated to read these. That includes you, Mom & Dad & various aunts and uncles!
(That said, the reason I'm posting them is that before I was depressed, I was generally at a loss to understand how my depressed friends felt, so I hope this shine a light onto at least some of the feelings I've personally felt. Other depressed people feel some of the same feelings and some different feelings.)
I am okay! I am getting professional help! If you are struggling, please do that - it's been so helpful in dealing with and processing emotions. If your therapist or psychiatrist is terrible, it is okay to switch. Please please please take care of yourselves, friends.
I feel like I owe some sort of explanation for the somewhat higher amount of suicidal content than usual in this post. The tl;dr version is that occasionally SSRI's and other antidepressants have the counter-intuitive effect of making you more suicidal. I think this happened when I upped the dose of fluoxetine I was taking, so I stopped taking it and the feelings more or less went away. I'm now on Aripiprazole, which doesn't make me want to kill myself :)
Lines similar to the poem Kindness appear in the previous post in this series, because I wrote the poem and afterwards was like "I don't have enough poems to make a post but liked these lines so i'll sneak them into this other post." I think it's much better as a poem than as a piece of a larger thing, so I'm reposting it here as a poem.
I would say Word Problems and Sorry About This Conversation are significantly more disturbing than the other poems in this post. It is okay to skip them. If you don't like disturbing sad art or can't handle it mental-health-wise right now, please skip them. I won't even know. It's totally okay.
Four Things
stop.
you're panicking.
four things you're grateful for.
a pleasant sight
a pleasant smell
a pleasant sound
a pleasant touch
the colorful sunbeams scattering off the clouds
the freshly-mowed grass scent carried by wafting heat
a single cricket trying too hard to be heard
the crunchy leaf that's fallen a month too early
they're kind of beautiful if you think about it
so pray, thank God, center yourself
and try your hardest to feel better.
the grays of darkening skies surrounding and pulling you in
the air of fresh wet dirt too young to be called mud
the thunderous crash of rain against the pavement
the windy spray of the storm raked across your face
feel better. feel better. feel better.
Text and Interpretation
hey! sorry this is a weird request, but can you make sure i come home tonight?
because i don't want to die
nothing big! just having a reaction to some medication
that way it sounds like i'm sick
or it's like a physical problem
cuz that feels more "real"
thanks so much! i appreciate our friendship so so so much
if this is the last message i ever send you
would that be okay?
should i send more?
meh it's probably fine
Deep Philosophical Pondering
I'll tell you it raises a lot of difficult questions
That sounds cool, like a reasonable thing to worry about
Who am I? And what does it mean
What do good and evil mean
What can anything possibly mean
when a pill can make you---
but not really make you,
because you genuinely wanted it
what could that possibly mean?
I'll tell you I'm pondering deep questions
Because that sounds a lot better than
"I'm still not over this minor event from eight months ago"
And you're not supposed to be sad without a good reason.
Love is
"if love is patience if love is kindness
if love is not a feeling
if you don't stop loving someone because you're angry
if you don't stop loving someone if you don't like them
if you stop loving someone when you mistreat them, and
you stop loving someone when your actions no longer support them
if you stop loving someone when you choose not to value them"
she asked me:
"what if joy isn't a feeling
you don't lose your joy because you're depressed
you don't lose your joy if you're not happy
you lose your joy when you stop trying
you lose your joy when you no longer believe you can make the world better
you lose your joy when you choose not to hope"
"umm, i dunno" i said
but secretly joy felt within reach
for the first time in i don't know how long
Word Problems
If you don't go to the ER, you kill yourself with probability p. If you go to the ER, you pay some cost d > $1000, but there are people to watch you and keep you safe. For which values of p and d do you go to the emergency room?
Without your medicine, you're miserable and can't do anything. With your medicine, you can do stuff but you sweat and shake constantly and you keep throwing up. Do you take the medicine?
Your psychiatrist asks you to describe your suicidal thoughts. If she believes you're at imminent risk of self-harm, you'll get locked up for at least three days with or without your permission and have to pay lots of money. You want help, but aren't certain you trust her judgment. How honest should you be?
Mild Side Effects May Occur
i'm pretty good just kinda tired i guess
Old Friends
i really really miss you
but my brain says
you wouldn't want to talk to me
i wonder if you feel the same way
Kindness
please stop trying
you can't fix this
and i'm tired of feeling like that's my fault
Four Weeks Later
what, you thought a pill would make you happy?
bahahahahahahahaha
fucking idiot
Sorry about this Conversation
how are you?
i’m okay.
i want to kill myself.
just okay?
just feel kind of bleah.
i want to kill myself.
what does “bleah” look like for you?
i don’t know.
i want to kill myself.
i want to kill myself.
i want to kill myself.